Auto Clutter and environments?

[pegasus1820]

Hi all, I have 2 questions. I heard that CS has an auto environment tool of some kind that populates it with trees, shrubs, plants, ext. Is this true and if so where is it? Also is there a tool that dose the same with interiors that places clutter or dose it need to be all done by hand?

[Vagrant0]

Hi all, I have 2 questions. I heard that CS has an auto environment tool of some kind that populates it with trees, shrubs, plants, ext. Is this true and if so where is it? Also is there a tool that dose the same with interiors that places clutter or dose it need to be all done by hand?

The feature you're talking about is controlled by region, through the region editor menus. There is nothing similar for interior cells. That said, the auto-populate feature is rather limited, and is not intended to be used as a sole means for developing an exterior. While it does end up putting in a wide range of plants and rocks, these elements are not always arranged intelligently, or how you would like them to be. The auto-populate should really be done before any roads or other things are present since it may either remove them (changing the ground texture) or will place trees and rocks inside them. You should go through every cell you've populated to make sure that there aren't any floating rocks/trees, and that things aren't clustered in an unnatural way.

 

Think of it as just a means of decorating these areas without having to hunt down every individual tree, rock, or plant you want to place. Beyond that, it's usage, as is, is limited. And it doesn't exist for interiors since interiors are far less predictible. There are hundreds of places within a cell, even if you were able to narrow things down to just within a room, that you could place a bookcase or shelf, then there are limitless combinations of things which you might want to place on that shelf.

 

If you're looking to make interior decorating go a bit faster, you might want to just setup a testing cell, place a number of rooms that you plan to be using, And setup common configurations, like table, chairs, silverware, or shelf with clutter. Then copy from a group within that cell, and paste it in whatever cell you're working on. Just make sure that you add enough variety in the configurations, and that you go back later to make each one slightly different in it's relation within the cell. The trick is to make no two interiors look the same, but still reducing the number of things you need to hunt down and individually place.